Trained as a cultural anthropologist and working on lived religion in Ghana for more than 20 years, Birgit Meyer studies religion from a global and post-secular perspective. Her research is driven by an urge to make sense of the shifting place and role of religion in our time, and to show that scholarly work in the field of religion is of eminent concern to understanding the shape of our world in the early 21st century. In so doing, she seeks to synthesize grounded fieldwork and theoretical reflection in a broad multidisciplinary setting.Her main research foci are the rise and popularity of global Pentecostalism; religion, popular culture and heritage; religion and media; religion and the public sphere; religious visual culture, the senses and aesthetics.

Birgit Meyer studied religious studies and pedagogy (for disabled children) at Bremen University and cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). After her PhD defense in 1995 she was affiliated with the Research Center Religion and Society (UvA). Between 2004 and 2011 she was professor of cultural anthropology at VU University Amsterdam; since September 2011 she is professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. Between 2000 and 2006 she directed the NWO Pionier programma Modern Mass Media, Religion and the Imagination of Communities. She has conducted research on and published about colonial missions and local appropriations of Christianity, modernity and conversion, the rise of Pentecostalism in the context of neo-liberal capitalism, popular culture and video-films in Ghana, the relation between religion, media and identity, as well as on material religion and the place and role of religion in the 21st century. Her book publications include Translating the Devil. Religion and Modernity Among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh University Press, 1999), Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure (edited with Peter Geschiere, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), Magic and Modernity. Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (edited with Peter Pels, Stanford University Press, 2003), Religion, Media and the Public Sphere (edited with Annelies Moors, Indiana University Press, 2006), Aesthetic Formations. Media, Religion and the Senses (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Things. Religion and the Question of Materiality (edited with Dick Houtman, Fordham 2012) and Sensational Movies. Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana. (Berkeley: The University of California Press). She is vice-chair of the International African Institute (London), a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and one of the editors of Material Religion. In 2010-2011 she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg), Berlin. In 2011 she was awarded the Anneliese Maier Forschungspreis (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation). In 2015 she received the Academy professor prize of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the NWO Spinoza award from the Netherlands Foundation of Scientific Research.

Gegenereerd op 2018-08-14 23:22:12

The publications listed refer to my publications since 2011. For a full list of publications see CV.

Meyer, B. (07.05.2015) Invited speaker Objects and Imagination. Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning Oslo (07.05.2015) How Pictures Matter. Presentation at the occasion of the book launch of Objects and the Imagination (ed Øivind Fuglerud and Leon Wainwright)

Meyer, B. (2015). How Pictures Matter. Religious Objects and the Imagination in Ghana. In Øivind Fuglerud & Leon Wainwright (Eds.), Material Mediations: People and Things in a World of Movement (pp. 160-182). Berghahn.

Meyer, B. (28.08.2015) Invited speaker XXI. World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions Erfurt (23.08.2015 - 29.08.2015) Integrating the Material, Bodily, and Sensual into the Study of Religion: a Round-table Discussion of Strategies and Approaches. Roundtable with Alexandra Grieser, Anne Koch, Ann Taves, Robert Yelle

Meyer, B. (14.05.2014) Participant Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) ‘Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge’ Groningen (12.05.2014) Frontier Zones and Pluralities of Knowledge, Roundtable (featuring David Chidester, Ulrike Brunotte, Matthew Engelke, Axel Michaels), Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) ‘Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge’

Meyer, B. (12.05.2014) Keynote speaker NGG/EASR/IAHR conference “Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge”, Groningen (11.05.2014 - 15.01.2015) Visual Culture and the Study of Religion. Keynote at the Conference of the European Association for the Study of Religions (EASR) ‘Religion and Pluralities of Knowledge,’ Groningen 12 May 2014.

Meyer, B. (15.05.2013) Organiser Film screening and discussion. Co-convened with Martha Frederiks and Mechteld Jansen (15.01.2013) Title: ‘The Prosperity Gospel’ in the spotlight: The appeal of Pentecostalism in West-Africa and the Netherlands.

Meyer, B. (18.03.2013) Invited speaker workshop of the Research Project Local Dynamics of Globalization Centre for Advanced Studies, Oslo University (18.01.2013) Habitats and Habitus – Politics and Aesthetics of Religious World Making

2016-2024: Religious Matters in an Entangled World. Things, Food, Bodies and Texts as Entry Points to the Material Study of Religion in Plural Settings. Research program made possible thanks to the Spinoza-award (NWO) and the Academyprofessor prize (KNAW).

2012-2017: Habitus and Habitat. Politics and Aesthetics of Religious World-Making. Project hosted by the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, in collaboration of the Department of Religious Studies and Theology, Utrecht University (2 PhD-students).

2010-2013: Cultural performance, belonging and citizenship in contemporary South Africa Sanpad project 10-13, I am the “Dutch partner,” in colaboration with Dr Heike Becker, University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

2010-2013: Creativity and Innovation in a World of Movement (CIM), with Maruska Svasek (Belfast, Project leader, BM is the PI for the NL-subproject), [2 part-time postdocs].

2008-2013 Research grant (principal investigator) by NWO for the research program ‘Heritage Dynamics: Politics of Authentication and Aesthetics of Persuasion in Brazil, Ghana, South Africa and the Netherlands’ [3 Phd students, 1 postdoc].